Victor Davis Hanson: The Left Is Rebranding Ahead of the Midterms

Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible, all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. Maybe it's Mabelane. Hello and welcome. This is Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. This is our Saturday edition, so welcome everyone. I hope you're having a good weekend. We have still lots of news on the agenda. We're on the UN General Assembly with walk out on Netanyahu's talk, and Malay put a pretty fiery talk up on the podium, so we want to look at those first and then we're going to talk a little bit about Democrats' woke and some of their campaigns. So stay with us for those stories and we'll be right back. Many Americans are going to have a big wake up call. We have never seen Net Migration as high as it has been in the last few years. This year there have been more people coming to the UK in small boats than ever before. You did an extreme thing to the country. Britain is facing a micro-friar epidemic. We don't actually know where they're coming from, who they are, how old they are. Why would you let in millions of people who are undead if not to change the country from within? There is no other word for it. Demographic replacement. England's a blue thing for America. It's coming. This. It's just a blue thing. Millions of daily migrant crossings. A political earthquake threatens to reshape America. We are showing there is a new path for politics in our country. Not all cultures are the same. You cannot bounce shitty. America is a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants. We're a nation of immigrants. The immigration crisis. Watch now on the Heritage Foundation's YouTube channel. Welcome back. Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Victor's the Martin A. Newly Anderson senior fellow in military history and classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website. Victor Hanson.com, the name of the website is The Blade of Perseus, and we'd love to have everybody here. So Victor, lots on the agenda, but I understand you were at a political event last night with Steve Hilton. I don't know if you had any few things to say about that first. He was in Fresno, and I was asked to introduce him and then have a Q&A with him. He's the best qualified Republican nominee in the last 20 years. He's a polymath. He had his own tech company. He ran restaurants in London. He was the political advisor to the British Prime Minister, David Cameron. He had the next revolution seven years as a foxtoe, so he's done it all. And he's mastered California issues. So I ask him a series of questions on what do you do with high speed rail? If you counsel, what do you do with this Stonehenge infrastructure? What do you do with the left stopping the California water project completion? What do you do with the equipment? What do you do with California? You get a lot of good answers. There was a lot of people there, but it's going to be very difficult. Javier Bacerra's attitude is two things. One, we, the Democrats outnumber the Republicans in registration, almost three to one. And the Hispanic vote is 45% of the population. I don't know how many actually are registered in vote according to that demographic. Maybe not as highly turned out, not as high as turned out as other groups, but they are angry at the ice and they tend to be very left wing. Most of them. And they're turned off on Donald Trump. So Bacerra's strategy is threefold. I'm going to stay in my basement. And I'm not going to campaign. I think there's going to be a debate tonight, Friday night. I'm not going to campaign, stay in my basement. Number two, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. Trump is at 39%. He's endorsed it. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. And three, I don't want to say a word about the multi-billion dollar fraud in California. I was a attorney general at one time when there was a lot of fraud that was starting. I was ahead of HHS when the federal government's funds were being misused. My chief of staff and Gavin Newsom's chief of staff have dipped into campaign funds in an improper way. I don't want to talk any about that. So I'm not going to discuss anything about my allegations of corruption or incompetence. I'm not going to debate Steve Hilton's issues. I'm going to rely on the fact that, as Karen Bass just said, the election is over because he's a Republican. All people are going to do, she said, or look at the name and after D, check it off. And that was a very cynical thing to say. She said that he's already through. It's not even close. She may be right. But if he loses after Spencer Pratt loses and the billionaire tax passes, there's going to be a lot more people leave the state. And what's happening in this state is the population is staying steady because the upper middle class and the wealthy classes are leaving. But people are coming here because of our rich welfare, social welfare cost and people who have come here, 27% of the California population was not born in the United States. And about 40% either were not born in the United States or their parents were not born in California. And they have birth rates at much higher than the indigenous population. And they have greater on average, greater social welfare needs. And 50% of all California residents are on Medi-Cal and 40% of all births are on Medi-Cal. So you can see what's happening. The people who have the higher incomes are leaving because they're taxed adept. The people who have the lower incomes and who are recent immigrants or their parents who are demanding more social welfare services and think that the original population should pay for it. And they're going to run out of victimizers because they see themselves as victims of a system. I don't know why a person would come from India or China or Latin America and come here and then have all these grievances against the existing California establishment, but they do. And it's just not it's not going to work. It's a medieval, it's a medieval state with very wealthy people and very poor people in the middle class and the upper middle class are leaving. All right. So let's go ahead and turn to the UN. And what did you think of all of that walk out on BB NetNia, who and how he handled it? Well, it was very funny that the Iranian government just slaughtered 30 to 40,000 of their own people and continues to kill them. And not as many people walked out when the Iranian spoke as when NetNia, who spoke. There were a lot of Europeans that walked out and he addressed that with Britain and France. He was really amazing. You know, he said, you call us settler colonialism or languages unchanged or people are unchanged since the third millennium DC and who were talking, the French who were the great colonizers of the Middle East along with the British. We inherited a British colony who had taken over and was not indigenous to the Middle East. They had a good point. We talked about Mondami trying to arrest him. You know, he said, why doesn't he arrest other people, but he won't ever touch people from China or Iran. Well, it basically was a diatribe and I don't mean that in a negative sense against hypocrisy. And then Malay and a lot of this, it was what was interesting. A lot of people from South America, a lot of presidents with this new conservative wave that Trump gets no credit for. But as I said earlier, of the 32 nations in South Central America and the Caribbean, there were only about eight, seven or eight pro-American democracies. And now there's only, I think, five that are anti-American and socialist communists. They're all conservative. The Paraguay president, who was newly inaugurated, he lambasted the walk out. So did Milley. He gave a great talk. He said that the UN were parasitical. Something just creepy, just to finish. Just looking at that delegation and reading about it, you have 170 nations. The majority now are not democratic. They come over to this rich bustling city. They cannot be prosecuted for any crimes. [BLANK_AUDIO] and budgets, and then they talk about democracy and they vote, usually to condemn the United States, the host, or Israel, but they never vote in their own home country. So they act like they're defenders of democracy, and then they trot back and their dictator pats them on the head because they walked out during Israel or Trump's talk. It's, I'm getting really tired of it. I think most Americans are, it's okay just to have met, but we could just take it out of here. And it doesn't really contribute that much to New York. It's not, New York's not going to sink or swim depending on whether the UN is there. I think it would be a lot better for it just to move to a neutral location. Why don't you put it in, I don't know, the Mariana Islands or Tahiti or something, neutral place. Or Iceland. Iceland. No, they would never do that. They want what they want in New York is media exposure, left wing media exposure, and then nice restaurants and big expensive counts. And a lot of them are, to be, I don't know how to use, they're pretty degenerate people. So they indulge in drugs, alcohol, sex, and it's all legal. I mean, you can't prosecute them. They all get part of that famous pictures they have of the older cars with hundreds of parking tickets on them. They're just immune, and they're mostly from the third world, so they hate the United States. And it's all Hush Hush. It's not, Netanyahu was really good and he addressed all the charges. I would have reminded him that genocide is impossible. They say they commit genocide against the Arab people and the Arab people inside Israel are now 20% of the population, when Israel was formed, they worked, I think, 12. You don't have genocide. Hitler, if you say Hitler committed genocide, he did. What if you said Hitler committed genocide, but the Jewish population doubled under in the third Reich? You see what I mean? He wiped out Jews. And that's what they do. Tucker Carlson had a big rant about all this. He went on Israel, Israeli TV, and he said that Israel was not a democracy because certain people don't vote. Now, I wanted to say to him, like who doesn't vote, Israel, every citizen, Arab, Christian or otherwise, over 18 can vote. Do people in the West Bank and Gaza vote? No, they're not citizens. Do they vote for the Palestinian Authority? Yes. That has semi-autonomy. And do they vote in Gaza? They did it one time. One time. Or Hamas. But Tucker, there are about 30 million illegal aliens in the United States. And they're here some of them a long time. Are you saying we're not a democracy because they don't vote? They're not citizens. We have more, we have a greater percentage of the population inside our borders that are not citizens, about 16 percent, 17 percent, 15 percent, then does Israel. And he counts the West Bank and Gaza as Israeli citizens who are denied the right of vote. That's absurd. And the more and more he talks, it's really strange because he's, it's just almost, I was listening to a rant and it's all conspiracy theories and it's basically, the more he says he doesn't do anything, the more that's an indication that he has said or done that. That's what strange. Well, Victor, let's welcome back our Saturday sponsor, pure health research. If you want to drop extra pounds, boost energy levels or reduce swelling in your legs and feet, this message is for you. Pure health research is on a mission to make America healthy again. And two of their best-selling health supplements are on the way. First is liver health formula. For 100 million Americans have a sluggish liver, riddled with fatty deposits. This can kill your metabolism, pile on the pounds and make you feel tired. Liver health formula takes care of all that. It supports thriving liver health with special nutrients like artichoke, x-shock and milk thistle. This is one of the easiest ways to slim down and revitalize your energy. Next is lymph system support. If you struggle with fluid build up or swelling in your legs, ankles or feet, this one's for you. The natural ingredients of lymph system support help to gently flush fluids and toxins out of your body. And right now, for a limited time, you can get 35% off liver health formula and lymph system support along with all 50 plus health supplements. Pure health research has to offer. Head over to purehealthresearch.com that's purehealthresearch.com and use the coupon code victor@checkout. That's pure health research with coupon code victor to save 35% on your order today. And we'd like to thank pure health research for a small change that we can show. Last night, I also signed a lot of books of the counter revolution and I was surprised to hear that it was sold out in a physical bookstore. Oh, really? Barnes and Noble and other family own bookstores. So if you want to copy, you should go to victorhenson.com or the Amazon. Yeah. Victoryhenson.com and we've also got a link if you wish to, it's linked to Amazon if you just want to buy it. And we also have an offer for a signed book. And that is on the same page, but you have to scroll down for the sign book offer. So Victor, let's turn to the woke Democrats and I or Democrats on woke on the issue of woke. And I know that the right has been celebrating rightly some victories over woke in the courts in particular. So you know, wrestling safe spaces from race, you know, the racism that it is or racial hiring or the lack of do justice for young men. David Strong on hot, hot air had this to say about it. I thought it was very interesting. I was wondering your take on it on this celebratory attitude about mitigating woke. He says there really hasn't been a societal sea change, just a slight recalibration on the part of the left to bring center left independence back on board to get votes in the midterm. The agenda hasn't retreated. It has retrenched just enough to survive and recapture power. Yeah. And I was wondering. Well, it's been so deeply entrenched for 20 years, 30 years. Some people listening as young people, let's say that are 20 and they were born in 2006. Before they were born in affirmative action and racial preferences had been there for 40 years. They've been there for 60 now. So it's an institution. And Donald Trump has only tried to dismantle it in a year and a half. And what's happening is that the universities are nodding because they're afraid they're going to get funds cut off and then they bring in their administrators and say, how do we avoid this? How do we get around this? How do we subvert this? Let's change it to not diversity, equity, inclusion, but belonging, the office of belonging. The other problem is you've got about 600,000 according to some estimates of DEI people working. And they're sort of like Soviet commissars. They don't produce anything. By that I mean they don't in universities and corporations, they don't sit in meetings and say, how do we increase productivity or how do we do student teacher ratios or how do we make sure the extra percentage of our high school class or college classes can read and write or how do we get sat scores up for first year students that were admit they don't do any of that. All they do is monitor and try to find a word here and action there that can justify their existence. So they're a big drag on the economy. The other thing very quickly is, I don't want to be careful what I say. I don't mean it in racial terms at all, but the idea of exemption that you take a great group of people and you say, we have arbitrarily declared you a permanent victimized class. And therefore your behavior will not be fully responsible because of mitigating disasters. That's contrary to human nature. So it's involved women too. When you see the Lindsey Clancy, they are trying to make the argument that because she was a woman and gave birth, for now forget the issue. I thought that men could give birth too, but apparently they feel only women can in this particular case that postpartum depression then must be institutionalized as an exemption for women. So if they were to strangle their children to take one example, oh, it actually happened, didn't it? Then they would be exempt from the full force of the law. And the same thing when you have stool. students and I've had this happen to me in my a lot. If I have students who are in that binary, the victimized class, then if they don't do work at the same level or if they consult their, say, their cell phones during a test when I say no cell phones and I report that to it, I have to be very careful because they will be treated differently than would the victimizer class. And that message then goes out. And the same thing when you talk, I used to, I still do, but I talked, if you talk to highway patrolmen and sheriffs, they will tell you that when they pull over people who self-identify as the victimized class, they have to treat them a very different way. And I don't mean equally. I mean, they have to indulge them. So if the person screams at them and swears at them and says, I'm not getting out of the car, they have to have so much more forbearance and patience than they would a victimizer. And that's what's bad about it because it's not just anti-marocratic, it encourages anti-social behavior. And we all, in some ways, I know this sounds revolutionary. The whole leftist movement, as it's evolved today, has one primary mission. And that is to find out ways most effectively to lie to the American people and say that we are not doing what they say we are doing. And if we were doing what they say we're doing, it's good for you. When they know it's not, and it's all about power, they know that D.I. is not good for them. They know that it's created a whole industry of people who are not victimized, searching their brains for any shred of victimization. Sometimes that can be even as trivial as an accent mark that they're, anytime I see somebody who's Latino and I've known and his name is John Lopez. And suddenly he reappears as one Lopez. That tells me something. And you know what I mean? It does. And anytime I see somebody who might know who will say of a minority or particular class. And then the next thing I know, the narrative is completely changed. And by that I mean I must have had 50 students in my past that I tutored. I don't mean I had in class, but I tutored. What that means is at the Cal State University System for 21 years, if you have students majoring in classics or history, they can't necessarily get all of the courses they need. So that requires what we call independent study. If you give independent study, that means that you're teaching four classes semester. One semester I had 12 independent studies. That means 12 hours, twice a week. And that was like a whole another job and a half. And I would say 90% of those students would be classified in the victimized class. But they never, they never felt that they were victimized. And so No, they should have felt very privileged in fact to get that kind of specialized attention from you know somebody. I mean, technically at the university, people are scholars that teachers. So specialized attention is very nice. It's not like a tutor or anything. I feel like a betrayal. So what I'm saying is that they got specialized attention at least for me, but not based on the race or their gender or their sexual orientation. It was they were serious students very bright. And they felt the curriculum. If they were majoring in classics and they were taking one Greek and lone Latin class, maybe they wanted to get a PhD in classics. So they needed weak composition. So I would give them an independent study how to write in Greek or if they were a general history major. And they were majoring in European history. And they missed the sequence of Greek history for semester, Roman history, second semester. I might give them an independent story, a study in fifth century Athens or something like that. And I did that all the time. I think when I left, I looked at it and over I gave over 300 independent studies. And I would say not all, but the majority of the students who could classify as victimizers, but surely weren't when I knew them because I was giving them a special treatment. And along with the victimizer class, I'd say at least half of them have radically changed their politics and reinvented themselves. And that tells me something. And I would say in the academic world that I know, I would say I know at least 20 people over the last 20 years have reinvented themselves as victimizers to the victimizer goes the spoil. Yeah. So the victimize goes the spoil. I'd think to some extent that applies that that university world is paralleled in the corporate world as well, at least to some extent, maybe not quite. I mean, the university is 90%. The corporate world may be a little less. A little different one reason. You have a Declan Mulvaney and you're right. When you put him out there with Bud Light or you do the Jaguar commercial with a bunch of crazy people that are DI and you take Oh, Nikki shoes and you put Colin Kaepernick in there and you brag about your diversity. You lose to a quarter billion dollars. You wreck Bud Light. You can wreck target with your transgender pants. And so the corporate people are all about money. So there are consequences when you do that. But there's no consequences in the university because subsidized. And it's morally superior. It says it to all of us. So how dare you suggest that. So they keep doing it even though it turns people off. Yes. And then some of them don't like the Sidney Sweeney commercials. Touche. But let me ask you about the candidates. There's in, especially in this sense because we see two candidates that are doing really well. If you think we have a non-mole world, they wouldn't be. And that's Al Saeed and Al Saeed and Talarika. The polls these today are they look like they're doing really well and anybody that's saying I'm baffled by them and I'm not baffled by them. I'm not baffled by them because Trump's popularity is at 39%. And the left is now everything he says for effect their season. So you know, if he says something crazy, that is the issue in local. There's no issues. If you look at what Talarika is saying or you look at while Al Saeed is saying, they're not saying that Mike Rogers is incompetent. He shouldn't have ever been a five-term congressman or he shouldn't have been CIA on the oversight committee. They're not saying he was an FBI agent. They're not saying that Paxton was a lousy attorney general or something. They're saying Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. And Trump asked for that when he said, I'm on the ballot. I don't know why he did that because he was pulling 39. I guess he feels that the polls are inaccurate and the people who are going to come out will come out and that could happen. And I hope it does. The other thing very quickly is I don't know what the polls mean. And I mean, Al Saeed was, as I said so many times, he was 10 points ahead of his primary rival and the only one by a point and a half. And it, if Talarika wins, it tells me that Texas demographically is not the same state. I know that the largest ethnic group is Mexican-American, but the Mexican-American voter in Texas is much more conservative than the Mexican-American voter in California. I understand that Trump has lost their majority's support because the left has so demonized him on immigration and said that instead of deporting 400,000 criminals or having one million self-deport and that he's going into schools and yanking out little children and putting them in cage, all of that stuff. Even though the vast majority, not the vast, I should say, but the majority of ICE agents are themselves Hispanic. So that he's going to lose the Hispanic vote in Texas, but traditionally the Republicans and the conservatives turn out in great numbers in Texas. So what those polls are telling us is you have a very weak smug, he's kind of a peat butter chick. He acts like peat butter chick, swarming, self-righteous, sanctimonious, glib. -Pakston or no, Talarika. -Yeah. So he's basically saying to Texas, I don't like your meat industry, the Texas longhorns. I'm a vegetarian and people who eat meat are just not very good people. I don't, I know you people are bibles from and evangelicals. But you got to remember that God is non-binary, non-binary. And there's a lot of Christians that I don't like about Christianity. And then in addition to that, he's got of said, I'm a vegetarian, I don't like Christianity, and I'm a radical green adherent. So as far as the Permian Basin, Texas oil, actually you people, you're really hurting the United States. Now those are his three main things that he's tried to wipe out and try to completely erase his prior identity. Every once in a while that crack in the facade allows his prior identity to ooze out. So somebody at an unguarded moment asked him, who's your favorite trans dancer? And I thought he'd say, why would I know that? And he almost within a nanosecond knew it, which opens the window into his mind, which was he is a radical trans activist. Then when you look at his typical background for a Texas candidate, oh, he's got a, he has the Texas ranch like the Bushes or the LBJ. No, he's kind of like Ross Perot around a successful big, no, no. He's like Abbot or Ted Cruz. He has a long record in Texas. No, no. He is a dynamic, I don't know, leader. No, he was from a little church. He lived with his mom or his mom subsidizes him. He has all these confl- he always talks, he has these conflated stories about his girlfriend. We don't know if she exists. He's very defensive about that. Otherwise, he's erased his social media past. So he's telling the Texas electorate, you would not vote for me if you knew who I was and what I have said. But for the next six months, I'm going to be a completely different person and talk about Paxton as a Trump person that you don't like and as a racist and as a person that clubs little kids that aren't white. That's what he's going to say. And then after it's over, he's going to say, for the first two years of my Senate career, I'm going to go back to who I, who I really am. But then I'll come back to this very convenient facade when I have to come up for reelection. That's what also does in Georgia. And we'll see if the Texans, you know, we'll see if they go for that. Didn't his reverence say that? In fact, that he would go left and then come back to who he was. I think it was him later. Well, I think that was El Saeed. Was that El Saeed? Yeah, I think his sister said, when El Saeed said, I'm a capitalist, he said, no, he's not. He's a socialist. Yeah. Because either his knees or his sister said that and he'll go back to it as soon as the campaign is over with, but it's a nightmare. The crowd, it's kind of, my Texas reminds me of Constantinople in the, for years, the Ottomans said, we're going to take the jewel of the Byzantine, Byzantine, and they couldn't do it because of the Theodetician walls, the huge walls of Justinian. And they tried, they tried, tried, tried for centuries. And finally, they saw that it was weakening. So they said, we can take Constantinople. And that is the end of the West and Asia forever. And they took it in 1453 on Black Tuesday, May 28th, 9th. So that's what they look at. The left looks at Texas. It's this huge state. It's got all these electoral votes. It's now the most dynamic economy in the country almost. It is. It's got agriculture, oil, shipping, high tech. And they want it because if they can get Texas, they can go it anywhere. And they've tried Beto. And they tried that crazy woman who was the abortion, the blonde abortionist, tried everything. And they always pull ahead. And they get outside LA and New York money pours in. And they get movie store. And they get everything. And the polls always show that it's neck and neck or they're head by four. And then cruise. And this case always wins. And we'll see if that happens. But they're always trying to take Constantinople as well. Exactly. No, I know. And I'm going to ask you, we need to go to a break. And I'm going to talk about another sponsor. But and you're going to talk about James Buchanan and Harry Truman after the break. And then when we come back again, I'll ask you about their opponents, Paxton and Rogers in Michigan. But let's learn a little bit about Prager You. Victor is a close friend of Dennis Prager and has the privilege of working with his remarkable team at Prager You. They carry some of your short videos. Victor appears in several five minute videos reaching millions worldwide. Remarkably more than 60% of Prager You's audience is under 35. And Prager is spelled P-R-A-G-E-R. And you stands obviously for university. So Prager You. The very generation, the youth are who most need our enduring American principles at a time when education and media too often erode confidence in our country. Prager You stands firm in defending truth reason and the ideas of Western civilization. We're proud to be part of the Prager You family. Please support Prager You with a text deductible donation today. Go to PragerU.comVDH/VDH. That's P-R-A-G-E-R-U.com/VDH. PragerU.com/VDH. And give generously two days. So yes, we were big fans of the work of Dennis Prager. And so please help them out. So Victor, I'm anxious to hear about Harry Truman and James Buchanan. I know that James Buchanan is always the poor guy that gets kind of blamed for the civil war and he said that he didn't do anything about it because he was pro-slavery. So he's a very strange person because he's a Northern or he was some Pennsylvania. So he was one of the Northern, did they call them dough faces or something, the people that were in the North but supported the South. And he was the great rival of Stephen Douglas, the Illinois Northern Democrat. So he of all the presidents, you could make the argument that he was the best prepared. He was a Jacksonian Northern Democrat. I think it was born in 1791. When he was 24, 25 years old, Jackson appointed him. He was a minister to Russia, an ambassador. He was in the Pennsylvania legislature. He was five terms in the Congress from Pennsylvania. He was a US senator from Pennsylvania. He was Secretary of State for Pierce. So by the time he ran, he was 67 years old and he had been in politics for like 43 years at every administrative executive legislative post. So everybody knew him as he had talked about presences. And then he said that he was going to do two things. Be one term and be a healer. And the idea was that he was a Northern Democrat and Democrats were, of course, mostly South. And he was going to have an amendment that said we will not interfere with the Cali amendment, which later Lincoln even adored. Well, not interfere. They didn't use the word slavery. They said they won't interfere within with labor inside each state. So he came along and unfortunately for him almost everything bad happened on his tenure despite his so-called expertise. He had a Southern or John Breckenridge who ran against Lincoln four years later. And he howl Cobb whose plantation William to come to sermon burned down during would burn down was the secretary to try half the cabinet or slavery successionist. And he tried to hold the union together by saying I may man a principle from Pennsylvania. And I support the Dred Scott decision. And Justice Taney will swear me in. And so he did. And he said we're just going to let everybody every state within their confines do what they want. But we'll have one principle. We're all not going to kill each other. And people said that didn't solve it. And the first issue was, of course, Kansas. And they basically said on the Kansas Nebraska Act, you know, not each state will allow the new settlers to do side in a vote, a plebiscite where they want to be slave or free. Well, you know what was going to happen. So the South flooded Southern Kansas from Missouri and the North came into northern Kansas. And the rest was under his tenure bleeding Kansas. And then you had the Mormon quote unquote we've all where Riggum Young, basically, for a while, said, Utah and because there were two things at the northern abolitionists and the northern wigs and then the new Republican Party said were not compatible with the United States. One was slavery and the other was polygamy. And so the Mormons were practicing polygamy, although they were mostly abolitionists. And so they sent U.S. troops and there was almost a war but Brigham Young. So he had the Mormon issue, he had the slavery issue and he had no constituency because the abolitionist wig, Republicans said he was a traitor to the north. The northern Democrats said if you're going to get a northern Democrat who believes in popular sovereignty, then you should get Stephen Douglas. He's 10 times smarter than Buchanan. And then the Breckenridge's cessationist said don't trust him. He's a northerner who's trying to pacify us. So when Fort Sumner, you know, when they've shelled it in April, he said what do I do? Should I send troops? So I say not to not to shell it. He just hesitated all the time. So he was a very ineffective and didn't help him any that he never married. And he didn't have a hostess at the White House. So he had his niece. And then he had affections for a young man that at times he lived with. We don't know because of the 19th century parlance when you say in a letter your beloved does that mean they had a a a coronal relationship. So there there was accusations that he was I think the gay movement said he was your first gay president. Then they looked at his actual record and said no he wasn't gay. He's Arthur Schlesinger and double historians set the pace where they said he was the worst president based on his pass pacifying the segregationists and the successionists. As far as Harry Truman in 1944 at the convention FDR was very ill and people said he's going to got a run for a four term and finish out the war but he's not going to make it. He was kind of like Joe Biden and Henry Wallace is the vice president and he's in about socialist dash communist. And if he's in there the Soviets will be running Washington. So what they did is very cruelly they got against the wishes of Eleanor Roosevelt they junked him at the convention and they didn't know who to get in because Roosevelt had so dominated the Democratic Party. There were no centrist and then they said well let's get a southerner of course and let's get a guy who ran an oversight committee about corruption and Truman did. But he was from a big political machine in Kansas City and he had a lot of skeletons and he was a haberdasher and he'd gone broke. So there were a lot of so and he was not a good speaker. He was not photogenic. He called him a bannum rooster because he was loud and cranky and full of energy, small and he wanted to live in Missouri. Independence Missouri he wasn't a Washington fixture but there was a taint of corruption all of them. And they picked him thinking that Roosevelt might get through and Roosevelt didn't like him and didn't tell him anything. Well Roosevelt died early April of 1945 and all of a sudden nobody had told Truman about what was the course of the Okinawa program. How are you going to pass away Okinawa? What will you do with the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb? Are you going to invade? How are you going to divide up Europe within the zones of occupation? All of those things he didn't know anything about. And the first thing he did was as a Missouriian he sized up Stalin and very quickly he said that SOB lied to me and he completely reversed the democratic appeasement of the Soviet Union even as the war was ending. And so then he's known for three or four things. Number one, when Stalin cut off all communications with Berlin, remember everybody that it was weird. Berlin had an allied sector in the city, French British American that became West Berlin and then Soviet East Berlin but that whole section was inside East Germany which was the Soviet. So you couldn't get to it if they cut it off and they said they wouldn't and they did. And then Truman turned over to Curtis Lemais and said how do we feed them? And they had DC threes and fours and they the Berlin earlier worked. He stood down Stalin. And then Korea the the Soviet had occupied the northern part and the United States said we're going to get out you get out and they said no. And they created a communist puppet government and they invaded and they almost they got down to Busan there was almost nothing left of the entire and he made a decision to save Korea. And of course MacArthur and he had a huge fight because he trusted MacArthur MacArthur brilliantly landed in Incheon. Trapped all of the communists in the South was way above the 38th parallel and on his way to total victory. So October, November 1950 MacArthur is the most famous man in America. The hero he said I turned around all of Korea I started with a 50 mile radius at the very tip of South Korea and now I'm almost to China and I'm going to unify will be all be home from Christmas and people said General MacArthur there's a million Chinese on the other side and they've been just armed they've just won a revolution they take it with China and they're veteran fighters and Mao Zedong is a brilliant strategist and they've got Soviet arms and by the way the Soviets let off in the atomic bomb in August 1949. So what are we going to do? And MacArthur said there's no substitute for victory. And so he went all the way and of course they invaded and it was the greatest military retreat in US history. We lost 10,000 soldiers on the winner and Truman didn't blink. He we leave MacArthur and said you cannot criticize the commander and I wish our own generals had listened to that because after he MacArthur did that to Truman we the next year plus the uniform code of military justice where we combined the Navy Army and Army Air Corps which become the Air Force all into a uniform code and we said you cannot disparage the commander in chief whether you're an active that was in MacArthur clause. Of course our during Trump's first term they all broke that and called him Hitler Mussolini a liar creep Auschwitz General Hayden I thought was the worst he drew picture he put pictures on the internet of Auschwitz and put Trump's name on there as if he was the cages he said were like Auschwitz so but anyway to make a long story short nobody thought he would be reelected because all his polls were so low he couldn't speak very well but he was scrupulously honest and he liked to play poker have a drink smoke a cigar he was really an every man and he won the election of 1948 in the biggest upset in history that's that famous picture he's holding with Dewey winds and the next four years were very tough for him because the Soviet Union flipped China and then it was who lost China or allied during World War II and then they flipped most of the new African states as British the British were decolonizing India Africa Asia they were all flipping communist and we had people in the State Department who were communist but that started the McCarthy area and all of that mass so when he left office in 52 all Ike said was I shall go to Korea they said how have we got in the war I shall go to Korea what are you going to do are you going to try to go up to the China border again like MacArthur or you're just going to give up I shall go to Korea and that was all he said and that's all he needed and the result was Truman did not seek real action he could have and he he left office with the lowest the lowest popularity until Richard Nixon I think it was 34% and then people took a deep breath and they started to look at what he actually did and he was a staunch anti-communist and he stopped Soviet aggression he saved Korea he saved Germany and he wasn't not a bad president he was a good president and he was the last I think you could make the argument he and J.F. the next Democrat after him was J.F.K. in 1960 in that eight-year interregnum with Eisenhower but he was the last true centrist anti-communist solid Democrat he and J.F.K. and after that it was over with yeah and then so next week we we will be talking about FDR and Abraham Lincoln. So that's gonna be our-- - So that's gonna be our-- - Those are the two, those are, I think nobody argues that Lincoln was our, Lincoln or Washington were our two greatest presidents. There's a lot of controversy over FDR. - Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's take a break and come back and talk a little bit more about the campaigns in Texas and Michigan, stay with us and we'll be right back. - Victor is a close friend of Dennis Prager and has had the privilege of working with his remarkable team at Prager U. Victor has appeared in several five-minute videos reaching millions worldwide. Remarkably more than 60% of Prager U's audiences under 35, the very generation who most needs our enduring American principles. At a time when education and media too often erode confidence in our country, Prager U stands firm in defending truth, reason and the ideas of Western civilization. We're proud to be part of the Prager U family. Please support Prager U with a tax deductible donation today. Go to PragerU.com/VDH and give generously today. - Welcome back, Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. You can find Victor on social media. His handle on X is @VDHanson and on Facebook @Hanson'sMorningCup. So please come join us there. So Victor, my curiosity is this. I know that we're in California and so we're looking from a distance, but we never hear anything about Paxton or about in Texas or about Rogers and yet their opponents are making the national stage. Everybody knows L. Said, not everybody, but a lot of people know Tala Riko and I was wondering, we talk about, this is what I think it is. Everybody looks at their Tala Riko and L. Said, who could possibly vote for them? There's no way they're gonna win. And I feel like these candidates that are Republican think that and they're not putting it all in. - That's true and I'll be candid with our audience. So far, this is the worst RNC campaign I've ever seen. I haven't seen here in California, maybe that's any good ads. I don't hear a lot of defense, but they're not making the argument and what I mean by that is they should be saying, there was 21% inflation under Joe Biden. These Democrats, the gas was higher. It got up to $5 a gallon. It was 5% plus inflation every single year. It's 2.6 now and as bad as gas is, it's still cheaper than a spike under Biden who drain the petroleum reserve right before the midterms. And that's why there's not a lot of oil left in it. And then they need to say, this is what's actually happening. We are worrying about two things, affordability, but that's because of Joe Biden's 21% inflation. We didn't lower that 21%. We couldn't given the way that the system works, but we got that 5.1 already down to two and a half. We cut it in a half and we were, as soon as the world will cut it down to 1%. That's what they need to say and then they need to say, it's like 1992 when the Democrats lied to you and Al Gore said the worst depression, the worst recession since a great depression when actually GDP was over 3%. And the stock market went up 10%. So don't listen to it because this month, September past month, we had the greatest business activity, productive activity, output in five years. We had the lowest poverty rate in history. We had the highest per-family income in history. The stock market for all the ups and downs is 10% standard and poor down over what it was at the beginning of the year. And except for the price of gas, it's averaging 450, which for me at 450 in California is a steel in a normal year. And so they're not getting the message that the Democrats are trying to do with Al Gore and Clinton did and turn high gas prices. That was because of the Gulf War, by the way, in '91. Into the worst recession, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's not, and they're not getting the message out. Number one, they're not saying next. Number two, this is what we're going to do. Here is record foreign investment. Here is the effect of deregulation. Here is what the tax cuts are doing. Here is our promotion of AI is we revolutionizing the economy and things are booming in oil and gas production. And it's all going to accumulate very soon. They're not saying that. And then they're not saying, these are not Democrats. These are not liberals. These are not progressives. I want you to know that these are socialist Islamists that who is running the Democratic Party. They will never tell you that until they're elected. If you elect these people, the United States, as you know, will not be unrecognizable. This election is between civilization and anti-civilization. These people, like Hassan Parker, who was their godhead, said that we deserve 9/11. Al-Saheed said he didn't want to tell people that the Democrats might be happy about the supreme leader of terrorists around staff because they liked him, basically better than they like us. That's what Al-Saheed was caught on mic. And AOC, she to leave Ilyano, you just quote them and see what they've said. We're not going to be able to survive 10 years. We shouldn't have children. The Israelis are terrorists. They're not, we're going to cut off all aid to them, Rashid to leave. Miss Kuros, she just said that the United States deserves, has to pay reparations to anybody that happens to be black, regardless of their background or any, it's just, they're not getting that message out. No, they sure aren't. And that's what happened in '92. The Lee Outwater had a brain tumor 91. He was gone. Their architect, he was the most brilliant campaign strategist or Republicans had. He was tough, mean, but he got him elected in '82, Bush, '88, and he was gone. And now we don't have anybody like that. Yeah. All right. That's a rant. Yeah. No, it was a good rant. Thank you very much. So we're on a really hard-- Yeah, so I'm going to do this last comment here. I have an appointment, so we only have about three minutes. This is from Janet Sparling. And she says, it's been amazing to watch your health grow stronger and as an answer to all our prayers. It's obvious from the comments, Jack, and Sammy read that I am one of many who thoroughly enjoy your tales from the farm about your family, your travel adventures, et cetera. Your fond memories shine through with every tale you tell. And so she goes on beyond that. But she had something interesting to suggest in her PS. She had a whole bunch of titles of things that you might do in the future. And the one I thought was really good was memoirs from "Mexapornia" as a follow-up to your book, "Mexapornia." So what has been happening-- I would like to do that. I'm working on a book right now. I got interrupted by this health issues about the 19th century world, agrarian world, and what it was like growing up from people who lived in it. And the values they imparted and their view of the world, and that the earth beneath our feet and their world of the dead. I think people like it. It's stories. It's not-- they're all historic to actually happen. But it's remembering what it was like to be free range on a farm, where your parents said, "At Saturday, boys, we want you to come back at 5 a.m. and help us mold along to the yard work, but you're free. You've got 135 acres go to it. And we wandered all around." And it sounds like you got to title the Earth beneath our feet. That would be a good title. I'm thinking so. Yes. OK, everybody. All right, thank you for joining us on this Saturday. And thank you, Victor, for your wisdom. This is Samuink and Victor Davis Hanson, and we're signing off. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhanson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.